Puzzle of the Silver Persian (18 page)

Miss Withers, with an unwonted delicacy, withdrew down a side path before she met them. “Love!” she remarked softly to herself. “It goes on at the brink of a volcano, and on the deck of a sinking ship, and in the shadow of the gallows.”

Then she caught herself short. “At my age!” she said. All unbidden the gay chorus from
Patience
came to her mind:

Twenty lovesick maidens we,

Lovesick all against our will,

Twenty years hence we shall be

Twenty lovesick maidens still…

She went back to her hotel, feeling very much alone, and wrote a long and very caustic letter to Oscar Piper, back in New York—a letter which made the worthy inspector suspect that English cooking did not agree with her. Hardly had she affixed the stamp when there came a tap on her door.

It was Leslie Reverson. “I say, is my aunt here by any chance?”

Miss Withers shook her head and knew at once that there was something else the young man had to say to her.

“Won’t you sit down?” she invited. Reverson entered and leaned against the dresser.

“I say,” he began once or twice. But that was all.

“What’s the matter?” Miss Withers prompted him. “Course of true love a bit bumpy?”

“Eh? No, no, not at all.” He grinned pleasantly. “But what I wanted to ask you—you see, Aunt Emily thinks you’re the real stuff, all wool and a yard wide, and all that sort of rot, you know. It’s an odd thing to ask, but I wish that if you get a chance you’d put in a good word for Candy—Candy and me, you know.”

“Why, I—”

“Aunt isn’t the easiest person in the world to get around,” Reverson went on. “Until she dies I haven’t a penny except what she gives me, and she makes me toe the line, you know. If you’d just say a word…”

“Of course, if the opportunity arises. But I don’t understand. I thought that your aunt approved of Miss Noring?”

Leslie nodded emphatically. “Quite. Oh, she does. But it’s more than approval I want. And Candy is so outspoken. We all had luncheon together, and Candy got a bit under aunt’s skin. She ragged us about not having serviettes at table unless you order them specially, and about the warm cocktails and the duty on cigarettes and no central heating…”

Miss Withers smiled. “Candida Noring is suffering from an attack of Homesickness Americana,” she informed the young man. “The best remedy would be to show her something of the real England, that lies outside your smoky old London.”

“Oh!” Leslie understood. “You mean the country! Never cared for it myself.” He snapped his fingers. “Wait—I’ve an idea! Marvelous idea! Aunt will be insisting on our leaving for the old ruins in Cornwall in a day or so. She’s been eating her heart out in town, mostly because she worries over silly old Tobermory. I’ll get her to invite Candy down to stay for a few weeks!”

He hurried toward the door. “Thanks awfully for the suggestion,” he said. Miss Withers, who felt a natural desire to keep the characters in her pet mystery play together until she could at least cast them in their proper roles, was mildly protesting.

“But I didn’t suggest—”

Young Reverson, jubilating over the new inspiration, was gone. Miss Withers shrugged her shoulders and went back to her magazines.

Bright and early next morning she set out for the Hay-market. There was a goodish crowd around the mail desk this morning, for the
Europa
had come in on Saturday. Miss Withers lurked about on the fringes of the crowd, trying to think of a dodge to secure the information she needed.

Unfortunately the same clerk, with the same thick glasses, was at the counter. He seemed to see more through the thick lenses than one would imagine. Miss Withers saw him look toward her and his gaze fix itself for a moment before it passed on. He was talking to a young man in a gray checked topcoat, who turned suddenly and strode toward her.

It was Tom Hammond—and a Tom Hammond that Miss Withers had never seen before. He was wearing a blue tie that went very badly indeed with his green shirt, and his eyes seemed slightly reddened around the rims. He was very angry.

“See here!” he began. “The clerk tells me that you’ve been—” He stopped short. “Oh, it’s you, is it? Would you mind giving me some explanation…”

“Not at all,” said Miss Withers coolly. “I’ve been trying to find you for days. But you moved out of your hotel, leaving no address but this.”

“I’m staying at the Englamerican Club,” he said shortly. “But what that’s got to do with your trying to wangle my mail away from the desk—”

“Young man,” said Miss Withers sternly, “be still for a few moments and I’ll enlighten you.” She drew him into a corner and produced an envelope bordered with black. Then she told him what it was necessary that he should know and very little more.

“Now you understand,” she finished. “I felt it my duty to warn you and your wife, in case this insane chain of murders is scheduled to continue. Since I couldn’t get in touch with either of you, I took the liberty of scouting around a bit, to make sure that nothing had been sent to you in the mail which might cause another tragedy.”

Tom Hammond was holding the black-bordered letter which she had returned to him. “This is all a lot of nonsense. I’m going to turn it over to the police.”

“The police have one of those letters and haven’t found out anything more about it than have I. Perhaps not so much. If you take my advice, you’ll take your wife and child and pack out of England just as fast as you can. This was to have been a vacation trip, wasn’t it? Well, you can vacation somewhere else—where it’s healthier.”

Tom Hammond gave her a queer sidewise look. “It’s easier said than done,” he remarked casually.

“What is?”

“Packing up my wife and child. You see, I haven’t laid eyes on either of them since the day of the Noel inquest.”

“What?” Miss Withers had not expected this. “You mean…”

“I mean that Loulu walked out on me,” he said stiffly. “God knows why.” His voice had raised a little, and almost against his will the words came tumbling forth. “After she left me at the inquest I came back to the hotel and found her packed and gone, Gerald, bags, and all.”

“But didn’t she leave a note?” Miss Withers was properly sympathetic.

“She left nothing. I don’t know what’s got into her. She ought to be examined by a lunacy commission. She’s been strange all the way over on the boat, and stranger since we got to London. If you ask me, I think she’s gone stark staring mad!”

“Now, now,” said Miss Withers commiseratingly. “It’s not as bad as all that. Perhaps I can help you find her.” She peered at him. “You do want to find her, don’t you?”

“I should dearly love an opportunity,” said Tom Hammond, “of being alone for ten minutes with my wife.” His voice was very intense.

Miss Withers hoped that she understood this as it was meant. “She can’t have disappeared into thin air,” she told him. “If I’m to help you, you must tell me one thing. Did you give her any reason for going?”

Tom Hammond glared. “No! No reason at all!” He was unnecessarily definite about this, the school teacher thought. “Though why I’m telling all this to you I haven’t the slightest idea!” he finished belligerently. “I didn’t ask you to interfere.”

“But you want me to,” Miss Withers told him gently. “You want me to find Loulu and your son Gerald—”

“Never mind Gerald,” said Tom Hammond. “He can stay lost.”

“—and give you two young things a chance to make up your quarrel,” Miss Withers went on. “No doubt you have hurt her feelings in some way without knowing. I suggest that you be very sweet when you see her again. You might smooth things over with a new wrist watch or a fur coat or something…”

“Great idea,” sneered Tom Hammond. “I did buy her a fur coat, as soon as we got here. I thought it might break the great silence. Paid sixty guineas for the best squirrel coat at Revillon’s, and got a chilly thank you. She only wore it once or twice, and left it behind when she moved out of the hotel.”

“Dear me,” agreed Miss Withers. “This is serious—and more serious still when you realize that your wife is alone in London with a murderer very probably lying in wait for her. And we can’t even get a warning to her.”

“If I can’t find her,” pointed out Tom Hammond sensibly, “I don’t see how the mysterious murderer can find her.”

“It might happen, all the same,” Miss Withers insisted. She had an idea. “There’s one quick way to find her,” she said. “You have a photograph of your wife?”

Hammond hesitated. “Had,” he said. “Tore it up.”

“Well, what about your passport? Don’t married couples share a passport?”

He shook his head. “We have separate ones. Loulu’s been over once or twice without me. Of course, she took it with her.”

“Well, if her passport picture is like most of them it wouldn’t help. I was going to suggest that we have the police and newspapers search for her as a person suspected of suffering from amnesia.”

“She’d thank you for the publicity,” Hammond said drily.

Miss Withers bit her lip. “Perhaps she can be found without publicity. It oughtn’t to be easy for a young woman and a child to disappear. Did she take—I mean, was she in funds?”

“Loulu has her own money,” Hammond informed her.

“Good! Then we can trace her through her bank. Let me have, also, a list of her friends in London.”

Hammond gave the information requested. “By the way,” he asked, “if you do find her, don’t let on that I’m looking for her. I wouldn’t give her that much satisfaction. Just tip me off to where she is, and I’ll do the rest.”

“Naturally,” agreed Miss Withers. She glanced at her watch and realized that she had been standing in this draughty corner of the express office for more than half an hour. “I’ll get in touch with you at the Englamerican Club if I find out anything. And in the meantime, if you should receive any samples of bonbons, restrain your appetite, young man.”

She nodded brightly and left him there. As she hurried down toward the Mall, serenely unconscious of the fact that a very dark-browed young man was staring dubiously after her, she congratulated herself. “A very neat bit of business,” said Hildegarde Withers.

She spent the rest of the morning in a vain attempt to extract information from the impassive officials of the bank through which Loulu Hammond was supposed to receive funds. The affairs of its clients, she learned, were a matter of the utmost secrecy.

“Well, would you give the information to Scotland Yard?” she demanded at last.

“If the police can show us a proper order of the court, very possibly yes,” she was told. “And perhaps not even then.”

Shortly before dinner time that night Miss Withers walked wearily in through the doors of the Hotel Alexandria. The Honorable Emily and Leslie Reverson were sitting at a little table in the foyer, behind two tall glasses. They waved, and she sank wearily in a chair that the young man sprang to hold for her.

“You look a bit seedy,” the Honorable Emily told her. “Better have something to warm you up. Been sightseeing?”

Miss Withers glared at her. “Sightseeing! I’ve been walking my legs off trying to find Loulu Hammond, who seems to have disappeared in thin air. I got nothing from her bank, and none of her friends in London have any idea where she is. I suppose that I’ll have to appeal to the Yard.”

“That ought to be easy enough,” the Honorable Emily told her. “That young sergeant from the Yard has been here twice looking for you this afternoon. Seemed to have something on his mind, didn’t he, Leslie?” Her nephew nodded.

“Good heavens!” Miss Withers started. “I wonder if anything has happened to Mrs. Hammond already?”

“It’s happened very recently then,” said the Honorable Emily. “Because she had tea with me here Saturday, the afternoon when you locked yourself in your room to think, and she also rang me up a few hours ago to thank me for some advice I’d given her.”

“Advice?” Miss Withers was incredulous. “You mean, about going back to her husband?”

“Her husband wasn’t mentioned in our conversation,” said the Honorable Emily. “She called on me—and at my invitation stayed for tea—to ask my advice about a school for her son.”

“Filthy little bounder,” put in Leslie Reverson and then subsided.

“She said that she had decided to send him to school in England and asked if I would be willing to recommend one. I told her about Tenton Hall—located down in Cornwall a few miles from our home. The headmaster is Starling, a very sound person who used to be Leslie’s tutor—”

“He spoke softly and carried a big stick,” said Leslie reminiscently.

“—and so she decided to follow my advice. She called up today to tell me so.” The Honorable Emily tossed off her drink.

“But where is she? From where did she telephone?” demanded Miss Withers.

“I haven’t the slightest idea in the world,” said the Honorable Emily. And that was that.

“Well,” decided Miss Withers, “I’m going to snatch an omelette and then see what sleep will do for my problems. The farther I go into this muddle the thicker it gets.”

“Must you?” asked the Honorable Emily. “Go into it, I mean?”

“‘One who never turned his back but marched straightforward,’” quoted Miss Withers.

“Of course, you’re right,” agreed the Honorable Emily. “None of us is safe until this mystery is exposed. All the same I was thinking that you might like to get out of London for a while. We’re going down to Cornwall tomorrow—if my dressmaker fulfills her sworn oath and gets my new suits over here tonight. Leslie has persuaded me to ask Candida Noring down—the poor girl needs a bit of fresh air after her horrible experience the other night—and I thought you might like to come along and have a look at Dinsul, the oldest inhabited castle in England.” The Englishwoman hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I’d feel ever so much safer if you were there!”

“Many thanks,” said Hildegarde Withers. “But duty before pleasure, you know. The heart of this maze I’m following lies right here in London, and here I must stay until I reach it.” She was thinking, oddly enough, of Loulu Hammond.

The Honorable Emily stood up and held out her hand. “Cheerio, then,” she said. “We’re taking the Cornish Riviera express at ten in the morning, and with impedimenta consisting of Tobermory and the bird and—and all the rest, we’ll leave rather early for the station.”